Annies Crazy World

 
 
 
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    This is Annie Whitsed's Crazy World a world where I stitch the joys and chaos of life into beautifull crazy quilts. email annie@loopylace.com
October 2008
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Happy Birthday Sam October 17th, 2008

Today it is Sam’s Birthday, he cooked his own cake and after I picked my niece Lily up from school we iced and decorated it…again we were working with what I had in the house looking around for ideas I found the dinosaur button and when I showed lily she said we can put him in the middle and he can be standing on a hill with clouds in the sky and she was away.

Happy Birthday Sam

Twin Stockings_04 and My Band Sampler 114 – Details 788 and 789 October 16th, 2008

Portuguese stem stitch, stem stitch and bugle beads

As well as the photos of the original 4 stockings I am looking at all the christmas stockings that I still have in the house and I found this seam on one of them. There is something about this seam that looks particularly Christmassy to me.

Portuguese stem stitch, stem stitch and bugle beads

Twin Stockings_03 and My Band Sampler 113 – Details 786 and 787 October 15th, 2008

snow flakes

This snow flake seam is another from one of the original 4 stockings. each snow flake is 6 fly stitches meeting in the middle with a straight stitch in the V of each fly stitch.

On my sampler the white didn’t show out against the cream background so I used different threads for the rest of the row, the silver metallic thread one worked very well.

Snow flakes on my sampler

Happy Birthday Jessie October 14th, 2008

Today is my daughters birthday, her brother cooked a cake for her and when I picked my niece up from school we decided to do a decorative icing…we had to work with what I had which was some tubes of icing for doing the writing, a bottle of icing flower shapes and a bag of mini M&Ms…It is hard to think of Jessie without thinking of the raiders so we picked out the team colours, the football is a button and to go with them I did a google image search for the flag, printed it and glued it to a skewer and a short time later we had a fun birthday cake for her.

A Raiders Birthday cake

Twin Stockings_02 and My Band Sampler 112 – Details 784 and 785 October 13th, 2008

Train track on stocking XAs I was thinking about the embellishments I started to think in the line of making a spot the difference, make the connections type game between these 2 stockings and as I followed those thoughts I realized that I could make links with the other stockings as well, with that thought in mind I printed out A4 size images of the other stockings.

For this first seam I did a train track under the train printed on the fabric and added trees along the track so that it links to the train track on one of the original stockings.

As I stitch each seam I am stitching the same onto my sampler, which will give me a nice little Christmas section on it.

Train and track embellishment

Twin Stockings _ 01 October 12th, 2008

first 4 stockings hanging above the fire place

In 2003 I made Christmas Stockings for a family, this photo shows them hanging above their fireplace in New York and they can be seen in more detail on my website. This year I a received an email asking me if I would consider making 2 more stockings for their growing family, twin stockings for twin boys…I had no hesitation before saying yes.

info in my visual journal that I have referred back toMy first thoughts were to how I could make sure that the new stockings would connect and match in with the first 4, I decided that the surest way to make sure that the new stockings would blend in with the older ones was to use the same fabrics, I had kept samples of the fabrics in my visual Journal so I pulled out as many as I could still match up and asked my son (to get a boy perspective) to select 10 of them thinking that I would then use the same ten in both new stockings so that they would have a connection with each other…At that point I was going to piece each stocking differently but when I got the fabrics in my hand I thought it might be fun to piece both stockings the same for their twinness and then use the embroidery and embellishments to give them their individuality and it will be a nice creative challenge to see how different I can make them look…Two of the first stockings have red tops and two have green tops so I decided that two gold topped ones would complete the set nicely and I did use different gold fabrics for the tops so that all the tops are different

Already by using different parts of the printed fabrics they have started to look different and I have pulled out a selection of red, green white and gold threads, ribbons, beads and the box of Christmas Charms…I am ready for stitching.

Twin Christmas Stockings

My Band Sampler 111 – Detail 783 – Operation Heart Day October 10th, 2008

Me age 5The 26th of September 1962 is as important a day to me as my Birthday…It was the day I had open heart surgery…In my first year of school, age 5, the school doctors picked up that I had a hole in my heart (a valve between the right and left side of the heart that should have withered after birth but hadn’t), without surgery the doctors gave me a life expectancy of about 20 years, surgery has now more than doubled that making it a day for me to celebrate.

I cut the hole in my sampler so that I could make a scare to match the one that runs down beside my shoulder blade and under my left arm with a smaller scare (for drainage tubes) below which for many years I believed was where the doctors made a mistake and had to start again.

The elephant is because I thought that the name of the Hospital was ‘The Prince Elephant Hospital’, it was actually The Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney Australia, a 500 mile train journey from home town Ballina and my mother had to leave me their and return home as she was 8 months pregnant with her 5th child, my sister.

This detail will be finished with a shark or shark tooth charm at the edge for the time when I was 19 and a friend asked what my scare was from and I told her it was a shark bite, why I said it was a shark bite I do not know and at the time we were interrupted and I thought no more about it until a few days later when in a room full of people my friend asked me to tell them about my shark bite, I asked them what they wanted to know and proceeded to give answers to their questions of when, where etc, it wasn’t till the next day that I realized that they had all believed me and I had to fess up to having told a Tall tale, a tall tale that has become and family joke that has given us many a good laugh.

Operation Heart Day

My Band Sampler 110 – Details 780 to 782 – Panel 6 October 3rd, 2008

This panel is a 20 count Linen and a very long panel as the width of the fabric is 6 ft, I have considered cutting it shorter because it is heavy but I like the idea of using each fabric in the length I get it so will see how I go before deciding to cut it shorter or not.

I have been writing the start date for each panel on the back but have decided that from now on I will embroider the panel number and start date on the front.

The next line of stitching is what I did last year for my TAST Pekinese stitch, now that I am working more intensely with the stitches I can see that it is not pekinese stitch but a double threaded backstitch.

The bottom row is using Pekinese stitch in a circle to make flowers.

The start of Panel 6

My Band Sampler 109 – Panel 5 Finished October 2nd, 2008

Sampler Panel #5

How I stitched the tag charms to the edge of samplerTo the right is the 5th finished panel of my Band Sampler.

The Heart tag for Le Tour

Last Month I mentioned adding charms down the side of the sampler, I stitched them on with silk ribbon which I threaded under the binding on the back and over the binding on the front so that the charms can sit at the edge or in front of the binding.

Sampler Tag #5 globe Tag 04 and 08 Chinese coin tagsI added the red heart for Le Tour De France because Hearts were the 2008 theme.

Chinese Coins tag both the Olympic and Paralympic games.

The Globe for the Stitch Along because it is a world wide web group.

A Broken brooch came in handy to tag My Fair Lady.

And for Spring a spring which my son wound for me from silver wire.

Sampler tag #6 blue hat Sampler tag #7 Spring

A leaf tag for autumnSnow flake tagI have also added 2 charms to the prior panels, a leaf for Autumn and a snow flake for winter, so that I can track the seasons from the beginning.

Below is a composite image of all 5 panels, total length now is 17 feet 4 inches and to help show my sampler in perspective I have also taken an image of the rolled sampler.

All 5 panels of my band samplerBand Sampler roll

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My Band Sampler 108 – Details 766 to 779 – Running Stitch and TIF September Colours October 1st, 2008

These Stitches are from the Running Stitch chapter of the Batsford Encyclopedia of Embroidery StitchesClick here for the back view with the names of the stitches.

Running Stitches

Take it Further September ColoursThese stitches also complete my 12 inches of stitching with the Take it Further September Colours.